Watch 1715 - 1735

Curator: Take a moment to admire this gilded treasure: it's a watch, crafted sometime between 1715 and 1735 by William Webster. You can find it on display here at the Met. Editor: Gold! It glints, doesn't it? A captive sun. There's a solemn feel about it, despite the frills – maybe because a watch is a little, insistent reminder that everything ends? Curator: Yes, melancholy is baked into the very concept. This is decorative art firmly rooted in the Baroque style. It isn't just gold, though; the mechanism is a symphony of different metals, all working in concert to tell… well, time. Imagine the precise labour. Editor: Oh, I *am* imagining it! Not just the watchmaker, but the miners, the smelters, the engravers, the people refining the gold, probably in terrible conditions...it becomes a chain of human endeavor and exploitation. Does the intricacy distract from or highlight that toil? Curator: The craftsmanship is exquisite. I imagine Webster, in his workshop, seeing time not as an enemy but as something to be tamed, even beautified. Isn’t there a defiance in that act? A ‘making’ against the ‘unmaking’ that time inflicts? Editor: Defiance, or perhaps distraction. It's hard not to think about what else was happening at that exact moment while somebody labored meticulously over these delicate scrolls—wars, plagues, famines, lives lived and lost. Curator: Perhaps beauty serves a purpose in all of that too. This wasn't just a functional object; it was meant to be treasured, displayed. A personal statement. Editor: Indeed, and how personal could it be? Did it change how its owner thought of their minutes, how the hours weighed? Did this watch ease an anxious mind, or simply add a layer of golden anxiety? It makes one think about how the elites marked, commodified and wasted the work of their laborers time, even 300 years later. Curator: A final tick-tock to that! Something beautiful made with precise expertise will carry stories across the ages, even unintentionally. Editor: Exactly. A luxurious device becomes a lens on a society long gone.